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Category: New Years Resolutions

Its already the third month of the year! How time flies, right? On Midnight of 12-31-11, there was a list of things that I wanted to tackle this year. But it never fails, only two things on the list stand out. Money and Health. Last month I made it No Unnecessary Spending February; I could only spend money on food. If you follow me on twitter, @djrelat7; you saw all the #NoUnnecessarySpendingFebruary tweets. I resisted temptation when all the end of season sales were going on and I made it through the month. Honestly, (puts head down) I broke down one day. It was the first week, the new Jason Wu line was hitting Target stores and Breaking Dawn Part 1 was available for Pre-Sale. I shopped that day on target.com, adding stuff to my cart. I even went as far as checking out. It hit me a few seconds after that this was part of my problem. I’ve become so accustomed to buying whatever I want whenever I want it that its not helping me pay off my debt. Fortunate for me and my wallet, I canceled the order a few minutes later. After returning a pair of boots that I found out were defective, my total for last month’s spending on wants was a whopping -$59.63. Now if only I could figure out how to return all this unwanted weight. Sigh! Sigh! Sigh!

July 2009

Last March I committed myself to becoming healthier, it was on the list of resolutions. I had taken a long snooze from going to the gym and I had let my eating habits go out the window. All the progress I had made a few years earlier had gone down the tubes. I avoided mirrors to hold onto the thinner me in my mind. In 2010 I took very few pictures of myself. Its all a mind set, that is what I kept telling myself. However the only person I was kidding was myself. In 2011, I took pictures for Valentine’s Day to have something to look back on and I saw it staring me in the face. A friend of mine had started Weight Watchers Online and she made it very appealing. I still hesitated though, until I weighed myself. 208. I could not believe my eyes. You never know how bad it is until you face it. This changed my mind quickly. Last March I made a choice. How hard could it be to try it out. What had I to lose?

February 2011

What I value most about their online system is recognizing portion control. It took my body a bit to get used to eating the amount of food that I was supposed to eat. It also took a while for me to mentally change my programming; Finish EVERYTHING on your plate. I had been raised with a certain way of eating that it made me uneasy to leave anything on my plate. When I am at home I take a smaller portion and add to it if I’m still hungry. When I go out to eat at restaurants, I ask for a to go container the minute the food comes out, I put half of it away before I even begin to eat. I realized that some things were not worth eating and the foods I could not image letting go of in my life, got shrunk to the right portion size. The Points Plus program is so flexible its hard not to win!

Since I began Weight Watchers Online, I have said good bye to 19.9 pounds. I have also said adios to 3.5 inches on my waist, 2.5 inches on my hips, 4 inches around the bust line, .5 inches on my arms, and 1.5 inches on my thighs. I went from a size 16 plus (at size 16 I switched from jeans to leggings) to being between a 14 and 12. I started taking more pictures of myself. I was feeling like me again.

February 2012

I have been on and off from the gym these last four months due to sickness and an injured foot. I’m very pleased to know that with the knowledge I’ve taken away from the program about what to eat and what to stay away from, has allowed me to keep the weight off. Today was my first day back since my foot has been out of whack and it felt good. Twenty minutes a day can make such a difference! I’m no where near my weight goal but its comforting to know that I’m still on track!

Have you looked over your New Year’s Resolutions? Are you still on track? If not, tomorrow is a day to start anew. How awesome is that? Giddy Up!

Until then,

Feel free to check out the program for yourself at Weight Watchers. The site is for both men and women YAY!

This morning I was thinking about my goals for this year and what I had contributed to them last year if they had been on my list as well. Today I wanted to share a recent positive experience.

In September, my boyfriend won in my name, a silent auction which gave me three training sessions at a wellness life . It wasn’t until November that I was able to begin my sessions. I found out that a wellness life is more than just a place to get fit, its a mindset, its a way of life; its about getting right inside and out.

After each training session I was happy to know that it was a good thing to not feel like you’re about to fall apart after working out. I learned that you should push yourself, yes; but not to an extreme. I think that everyone is accustomed to hearing ‘No Pain, No Gain’, so we push ourselves past the point of pain, and we shudder at doing it again.

I completed my third training session with Tammy right before Thanksgiving and I must say that I didn’t expect to connect to a personal trainer the way I did with her. Not only did she make sure my mind set was in the right place before we began but I also got a taste of reformer pilates, strength training without using the bulky machines and TRX. I found them all to be equally challenging. After the three sessions I felt stronger and revved up to become the healthiest me I can be, inside and out. I HIGHLY recommend a wellness life!

Is being healthy on this year’s list of resolutions? It’s on mine. Next week I’ll start sharing my story on my Getting to Healthy journey, so stay tuned. I hope that your year is off to a great start and everything is starting to fall into place.

I added another item to my new years resolution, ask more question and send more emails to companies that do not have your questions answered in their Help/Frequently Asked Questions section. So here’s to #5 on the list.

I love watching movies, all kinds of genre’s catch my attention. Although which one I watch depends entirely on my mood. As you know, in the spirit of spending more time with myself, I have rented quite a few dvds in just this past week alone. I rent from the local redbox machines, which are quite convenient. For $1.00 you can rent a new released dvd if you’re at the machine bright and early on the Tuesday morning it comes out or with a reservation on their website. When you return it and you happen to be in a different location, its OK, you can return it to another Redbox location. So Sunday night I rented 3 dvds, went to bring them back on Monday and the machine was full. If there are not enough slots to hold another dvd the machine says ‘Sorry this machine is full, please bring the dvd to another redbox location’. So I had the free First Monday coupon code and rented another movie. Now there was space for 1 more dvd in the machine and returned one. But then I still had 2 dvds left to return. As luck would have it, a man and his son rented 2 dvds, enough room for the rest of mine. I then leave to go to Stop and Shop to run an errand for my mum and I decide since I have my boyfriend’s coupon code that I’d pick up another dvd. In my head I’m thinking what are the chances of the machine being full again tomorrow. Well that was wishful thinking! I went to bring back my two dvds on my way to work in the morning to read FULL… stopped at the Stop and Shop in Shelton, where I thought for certain I could drop it off, NOPE FULL!!! Stopped at one in the afternoon, FULL!! So I took a look at redbox’s Help section on their website. They address what happens if it is full, to stop at another location or you can keep it for another day and pay the daily fee. I did not see what to do if it happens to you two days in a row, so I wrote them a letter. Like to hear it? Here it goes:

Hi,I understand that if you cannot return a dvd because the redbox is completely full, and won’t allow you to return a DVD, I am to return the DVD to another location. However, I am having an ongoing issue whenever i go to return a dvd the machine is full, i go to another location and the machine is full. Sunday I rented three dvds and went to return them on monday…I had to swap out dvds by renting new ones, which is fine whatever, but then I tried returning the ones i got monday night on tuesday, again sorry machine full…SO i kept them an extra night, what’s 2 bucks…but they were already watched…I attempted to return them this morning…again Sorry full, went to the stop n shop in shelton, sorry full, tried again a few minutes ago, sorry full, I am not keeping them another night to be charged another two dollars for dvds i watched on monday night and couldnt return on tuesday because all the machines are full. I like redbox, i like the fact that new releases come out on tuesdays, i like that its 1.00 to rent, i like that i can return it to another location, I mean how convenient is that….but this is progressively annoying. Can you please tell me what to do when you’ve gone two days in a row without being able to return your dvds because the machine is full?

thanks in advancearelis “If you want to get somewhere you have to know where you want to go and how to get there. Then never, never, never give up.”

~ Norman Vincent Peale

On my way home at another location, FULL! I finally found a redbox at another Stop and Shop to return my dvds to, and as I inserted them into the machine I had serious thoughts of renting from redbox again. However, seeing as this was my first run in with full machines after months of renting from them and because of the value it does provide, I’m sure I will.

Most might find that writing an email like that is just a complaining consumer/customer letter that will more than likely be ignored or responded with a “Sorry for you inconvenience”. This may be true. However, it also alerts the company in question of a potential ongoing issue that was never brought to their attention. It also may result in a reimbursement, either in partial or in full. So in the email give a compliment, what your dilemma is and how you would like it to be resolved, or ask how they would normally handle that situation as they may just not have it posted. I’d be interested to hear some of your stories from the past and in the future.

On a happier note, I’ll be adding a “DJrel’s Movie Review” soon so look out for that.